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The Dutch newspaper, de Volkskrant, linked the row to the imminent, and highly controversial deployment of Dutch forces to a new Nato peacekeeping mission in southern Afghanistan.

In the United States, the conservative Wall Street Journal claimed the Middle East was successfully using the row over the cartoons to export its repressive system to Europe.

While the paper was among many in the US which accepted that the cartoons were offensive, it said that death threats, embassy burnings and the withdrawal of ambassadors were an over-reaction. Other American newspapers have questioned the wisdom of publishing the cartoons.

The liberal Washington Post wrote yesterday that, while Muslims were well within their rights to protest against the publication of the cartoons, the protesters showed a "basic misunderstanding" when they demanded apologies from the leaders of Denmark or other European countries.

"In many Muslim-majority countries (Egypt and Syria for example), officials do control the press and so are accountable for the ugly anti-Semitism that often appears in their newspapers."

The same was not true in the West, the Post said. Writing in Ramallah's al-Ayyam newspaper, the Palestinian novelist Adel al-Usta suggested the way to respond to the cartoons was "to ignore the whole issue, and republish the European books which talk in a bright way about the Prophet Mohammed".

In Oman's Alwatan newspaper, Zuhair Abed argued that the current climate drew parallels with the days preceding the Crusades: "All that is needed now is the spark, in a European magazine or a newspaper, then the war starts, between the Arabs who revere their honourable prophet and the West."

In South Africa, editors denounced a "blow" to press freedom yesterday after the High Court issued an injunction banning them from publishing the cartoons.